


the colour of blood, chaos, and corruption of a happy ...song

by handschuhmaus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Knitting, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, What Have I Done, in which Harry Potter has two mums three dads two uncles and a godmother, tatting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 07:20:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11481429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: "the future's looking colourful: it's the colour of blood, chaos, and corruption of a happy..."It could be a very different world that James and Lily's child is born into, given certain other factors...like Riddle not getting mistreated by Muggleslike Lily's friend from the Snape house not feeling rejected by both worldsQuote from "The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner", a Belle & Sebastian song. Although the next word's soul in the song.





	the colour of blood, chaos, and corruption of a happy ...song

**Author's Note:**

> So occasionally I still get the HP muse on. As always, mostly villain and antihero families...
> 
> Both more and probably deceptively positive than the title and such make it seem.
> 
> Join me, or not, as I hopefully write exploration further into yet another AU...

i. Anyone would conclude, from the outside looking in, that Merope Gaunt had a daughter out of wedlock. You don't name a daughter after the father that didn't want to be one, didn't want her to exist; and poverty is crushing but it's also where the lines drawn between the wizard and muggle worlds crumble here.

Floral names don't seem right for the baby with the dark fuzz of hair and intense blue eyes that seem to have a focus the day after birth. She thinks about calling the child after her own grandmother but she still lives and it doesn't seem like a good idea to go naming her after... well, anyway, it wouldn't be a compliment among the Gaunts, when this child's father, the only one Merope has ever fucked, hasn't a modicum of magic in his veins. (That's a strange expression, maybe. It's not at all certain that magic is primarily in blood.)

Something in her says she should have died. Morfin died over the winter, no heat in their hovel, and she had been the one who produced a halfblood, and so surely didn't deserve anything less than what he got.

But Merope also doesn't want to die and so she finally finds work, poor work for a witch but all she can find, and something she is halfway decent at, cleaning houses in the village. It is Alcyone she names her child, after one of the mythical sisters of another Merope, and she keeps her close as she works...

ii. In a hushed conversation in the doorway, involving the phrases "trisomy 21," "muggle psychology," and "we think the kid is a wizard," the possibility of removing the new baby from the shabby Muggle house comes up. Eileen is proud and stubborn and ...doesn't really know what to do.

Tobias Snape doesn't like the cold hard fact that has been dropped in his lap along with the longed for baby, and, honestly, that's his right. It won't be cheap or easy to raise the kid, though Eileen wants him to live, and Tobias's life hasn't been easy already. This on top of the miscarriage she had before this...

She hasn't seen her parents in years, not since before she married Tobias, and awkwardness, all the things unsaid, hangs in the air, almost palpable. There have been letters, short ones generally, a page here and there of polite news and they knew she was pregnant. But they haven't been in each other's daily life anymore, haven't eaten together in years.

They're right, though, and Mother is recovered from the pall of sadness that hung over her in Eileen's youth, postpartum hormones hitting the pre-existing devastation from losing her twin. She hadn't thought Father would care to accept the child. He is pureblood and there seems little reason for him to take in Tobias's offspring... Except that the years in Slytherin had jaded her, led her to think it's all a matter of bloodlines for him, and made her forget that Ephineus Prince had been an adoring if slightly distant father and of course he wraps her in a hug and demands goodnaturedly to hold his grandson.

Tobias doesn't know them and doesn't entirely trust them; he knows Eileen came from money, but he must have half-figured she had long-standing quarrels with her parents, when it hadn't been quite like that. It's explained to him too, over again--and perhaps it's better that grandparents with the faculty for research and a bit of distance from it examined the verdict pronounced upon their child. He probably won't do well if he ends up in a group home, and it's not really that magic is ahead on this issue, but it will make things easier and there is Prince money and you are welcome to come, live even, visit.

Maybe, once he's weaned, she suggests and she and Tobias talk about it under the covers, interrupted by their sweet, genetically flawed baby. The solution gets accepted. Tobias isn't going to find himself at a loss about how to find the resources and what they're going to do whenever unusual difficulties come up. 

Eighteen months, of back and forth visits and first milestones, later, Eileen gets pregnant again, and asks Tobias if he wants to try to raise a son. 

Another three seasons, January, and she presents him, wearily, with a more or less normal, if likely magical, daughter. Not the son he had hoped for. It's the sixties and there's nothing so odd in a man wanting a son, but it's not altogether likely that they want to raise two kids right now with continued employment looking possibly uncertain, even though so many do it, nor foist the girl off on Eileen's parents as well...

iii. Petunia already has a baby, chubby and angelic and already won her heart at 2 months old, the only bright part of life right now. She hasn't liked Lily, really, in years, there's been too much between them. She never liked James Potter or his toerag friends--well, the quiet one, the one whose name had something to do with Rome (and wolves, she thought) would probably be alright bereft of the others' company but when was that?

But there are some things, Petunia is convinced, that sisters do for one another (Lily would still do this for her even though she seriously dislikes Vernon) and: James Potter isn't capable of fathering offspring, while Lily--Lily certainly can conceive, but it hasn't ended up right ever, ectopic pregnancies, spontaneous abortions... Would you, Petunia--and yes, he wants it to be one of his friends, they're close as brothers, there's no one else--carry a child for us?

Sirius Black--that's one name--is an intolerable man, at least at this point, and carrying the hellion hybrid of him and her sister is at least a hundred entries down on Petunia's list of "Things I Would Do If My Family Absolutely Needs Me To", or would be if the list actually existed. She suggests the quiet one--don't you think his genetics must be at least slightly less prone to producing obnoxious teenagers?--and Lily pales, says there might be a problem (or it might be just fine!) and they'll have to discuss it.

One month later, Lily tells Petunia, yes, that they have found workable options and Petunia as a surrogate for Lily and Remus's child that James will adopt is a possibility, it's just we really have to tell you--it's supposed to be not a concern medically or for the child--he's a werewolf. Well. Werewolves can't be as bad as in the old movies if quiet Remus is one. Petunia says yes.

Vernon says an emphatic no, and she didn't even mention the werewolf part, or the bit about James's problem and his friend pinchhitting.

For all that, when it begins in another three months, the pregnancy goes remarkably smoothly, Lily dropping by once a week, at first with soda crackers from their childhood (that aren't carried in Little Whinging) and ginger ale, and then with sweet hot deli pickles and American peanut butter from a special shop and sweet-sour cabbage soup and dal Makhni and chicken lo mein at various turns when she gets odd cravings. Dudley likes Aunt Lily. The divorce is crawling on--it takes a while to find a lawyer and time to think on why exactly it is that she wants to spilt up the family that should have been Dudley's birthright, all interrupted by her obstetrics appointments, for which James Potter foots the bill. And neither she nor Vernon are keen on making a spectacle of it, so they're still living together, and he doesn't actually want to be divorced...

iv. It's a bizarre thing for a little girl to do but Ariana runs. She's not supposed to be in this side of town or alone, but she doesn't want to be a part of what was happening at home. She finds a friendly looking red house with lots of plants around it and sits down...

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Four for a birth  
> 2\. Two for mirth  
> 3.  
> 4.  
> 5.  
> 6.  
> 7.
> 
> One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret not to be told, eight for heaven, nine for hell, ten for the devil's own sel' (one form of a crow counting rhyme)


End file.
